VentureBeat article: How MPQ is making its money

scottee

IceIX wrote:

kevind722 wrote:

the reason the covers packs has a larger piece of the pie is because it cost more. the chart is how much HP was spent, not how many people spent HP for example if theyar pooling 10 people and 2 spent 3800 on cover packs and the other 8 spent a total of 7600 on the other items you would show 50% being spent on cover packs when in reality on 20% are spending on cover packs

Nope, these are represented by discrete events, not currency spend.

I'm guessing then that there's LOTS of people who buy individual tokens instead of packs.

I can see someone thinking "I need one lazy Thor cover." So they buy event tokens one at a time until they get it, hoping they end up spending less than the 10x pack.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

For the heroic tokens, there's roughly a 15% chance to get a 3* so it works out that 600 HP (6 daily deals) gets you a random 3*. That's usually not a good deal unless you're very lacking in 3*.

Actually, you're making me wish I had noticed this and bought up daily deals a couple of months ago when I still had most of my "useful" 2*s lacking at least one cover and no maxed 3*s

Unknown

Now that I think about it, getting a 10x cover pack when you start playing this game would be SUPER exciting. Usually I get worked up over 1 new character.Imagine how 10 brand spanking new heroes would have made you feel the first time you started playing this.

That is until you realised you didn't have the roster slots for it

Unknown

Part 2 is up about cover pack changes, mainly adding the 10-pack and daily deals (not counting yesterday's change).

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-2-cover-store-overhaul/

Interesting quotables:

Demiurge wrote:

Over the past couple of weeks, about 90 percent of Hero Points spent on our nonevent Heroic cover packs were spent on the 10-packs.

Demiurge wrote:

Ninety-seven percent of purchases of the standard single-pack are for the daily deal price.

Demiurge wrote:

It’s hard to prove a causal relationship between a design change like this one and an uptick in ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user), but the before/after of this change looks to have been a solid 20 percent bump by itself.

Part 3 looks to be focused on explaining monetization of event packs and shielding in tourneys.

Unknown

I gotta say, I find this behind-the-scenes look very fascinating. I wish more companies would do this.

IceIX

Lyrian wrote:

Part 2 is up about cover pack changes, mainly adding the 10-pack and daily deals (not counting yesterday's change).

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-2-cover-store-overhaul/

Hey, Al used the screenshot for the new cover store from R52+. Interesting.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Part 2 is up about cover pack changes, mainly adding the 10-pack and daily deals (not counting yesterday's change).

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-2-cover-store-overhaul/

Hey, Al used the screenshot for the new cover store from R52+. Interesting.

It looks fantastic!

This series of articles is very interesting. I like knowing as much about the game and its success as possible. It helps me rationalize the time I spend on it

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Part 2 is up about cover pack changes, mainly adding the 10-pack and daily deals (not counting yesterday's change).

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-2-cover-store-overhaul/

Hey, Al used the screenshot for the new cover store from R52+. Interesting.

Well now that the marbles have been spilt over why these new design changes happen, maybe we won't subliminally succumb to these influential factors...

Or maybe we will.

Unknown

Daily deal: Ideally, all of our players would spend a small amount on the game each day. To encourage that, we permit players to buy one card each day at a very steep discount.

Lol. They want us to spend $1/100HP every day?!

IceIX

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Lol. They want us to spend $1/100HP every day?!

In a perfect world? Sure, that'd be awesome. Do we know that's never going to happen? Yes.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Lol. They want us to spend $1/100HP every day?!

In a perfect world? Sure, that'd be awesome. Do we know that's never going to happen? Yes.

I could see myself doing it if cover slots were free. It would be worth the gamble from time to time to get the daily heroic pack.

Unknown

Team_Xtreme wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Lol. They want us to spend $1/100HP every day?!

In a perfect world? Sure, that'd be awesome. Do we know that's never going to happen? Yes.

I could see myself doing it if cover slots were free. It would be worth the gamble from time to time.

I could see at least spending a lot more than I do now if there was any true single player content beyond the prologue.

Puritas

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Daily deal: Ideally, all of our players would spend a small amount on the game each day. To encourage that, we permit players to buy one card each day at a very steep discount.

Lol. They want us to spend $1/100HP every day?!

I'd be doing that easily if there were more character releases.
As it is, for the 3 *** characters I need?
yeah not happening

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Daily deal: Ideally, all of our players would spend a small amount on the game each day. To encourage that, we permit players to buy one card each day at a very steep discount.

Lol. They want us to spend $1/100HP every day?!

I'd be doing that easily if there were more character releases.
As it is, for the 3 *** characters I need?
yeah not happening

It's a good deal for newer players. But if you already have most 2* covers and many 3* covers, getting the cover you want via heroic won't be easy.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Part 2 is up about cover pack changes, mainly adding the 10-pack and daily deals (not counting yesterday's change).

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-2-cover-store-overhaul/

Hey, Al used the screenshot for the new cover store from R52+. Interesting.

That could explain what the "unusual" screen layout on the top picture. That said, the graphic seems... incomplete? Is the picture cropped somehow? Although I can say that the wider space allocated to the new graphics is much more appealing in an eye-candy sense than the current system, where is the pricing information and purchase button? Is an overlay missing, or does the entire graphic now become the purchase button? And if so, does the 10 pack get pushed to a different screen altogether (which would seem like an odd course of action to follow, especially after noting the success of the 10 pack in the VB article)?

Overall though, the graphical transition/layout from past --> present --> future appears to continue an advancing trend in intuitive layout design. Thumbs up from here!

IceIX

Lyrian wrote:

That could explain what the "unusual" screen layout on the top picture. That said, the graphic seems... incomplete? Is the picture cropped somehow?

It is cropped, yes. It's also still WIP, so what you see there may not be what finally comes out.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

That could explain what the "unusual" screen layout on the top picture. That said, the graphic seems... incomplete? Is the picture cropped somehow?

It is cropped, yes. It's also still WIP, so what you see there may not be what finally comes out.

I liked the large picture layout. I would like to know whether it's through a button or a splash screen what heroes are possible in each pack. I get the 3*'s are shown, but it would be nice to know what 2*'s are available as well.

By the way, my coworker and I were discussing the articles posted. It was really interesting to see how the business model is working and the HP spending breakdown. We were definitely surprised by the results as we had our own ideas on what people were spending money on.

Unknown

3rd article is now up and talks about the Event structure and game design decisions. Definitely a must read.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/15/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-3-event-design-improvements/

Interesting quote:

The central thesis of our monetization strategy is to think of Marvel Puzzle Quest as a subscription service. Essentially, we want the business of Marvel Puzzle Quest to be more like Netflix than like Call of Duty. We provide a steady stream of new content for players, and we hope they’ll find value in that content.

On the surface, it might seem that the below mechanics would put a huge strain on our player-base, but there’s an absolutely critical release valve in how we construct our event calendar. The top prizes in an event are always hyper-valuable in the next events. This design works a bit against monetization — we offer the hot new character to our most engaged players without event giving players a chance to buy them. However, it does a great job of rewarding players for performance and helps drive retention by pulling players from one event to the next.

Before we had the right pieces in places, we’d run an event and see a gradual rise in revenue over the lifetime of the event and then a dropoff at the end. These trends correlated with engagement. As players played a lot, they spent more. That’s wonderful, but if you want to drive LTV (Lifetime value), you need to give the players something they value regardless of how many hours they spend playing. Under these new systems, we see a sharp revenue spike at the start of our events as players are excited to get their hands on the new cover packs.

Unknown

Most events feature a newly released character available in card packs at the start of the event. Like League of Legends, a certain hunk of our monetization comes from excitement about the gameplay and personality offered by that character.

Unknown

I find these articles completely fascinating!